Category: Movies

  • Balancing Writing and Parenting:A Conversation with Playwright Isaac Rathbone

    Here is an interview with my friend, Isaac Rathbone, who is a playwright and screenwriter, conducted by Boomerang Theatre Artistic Director Tim Errickson. Their discussion is about the balance of writing and parenting.

  • Comedy, Inside Jokes, and a First Draft

    When I was in college, and I was a theatre major, I had a running debate with a good friend, which was, are Shakespeare’ comedies funny? He said yes, and me, to be a jerk, said no. My main reason for the stance I took is that comedies are full of inside jokes that the audience never notices, and what Elizabethans found funny, no one gets anymore. Yes, the puns survived, but puns aren’t funny.

    Also, for comedy to work it needs context and surprise; context established the frame work for a surprise to be funny, and the surprise is funny because context says the surprise shouldn’t be there. Hence, if we don’t understand the context, how can the surprise be funny, or even to be understood as a surprise in the first place.

    Then there are inside jokes, which no one gets except a handful of people, having been orchestrated by the writer. I had a friend who recently had their screenplay produced and released. He had put several inside jokes in the screenplay, most of them honoring quirks his wife has which he loves. All writers do this, which is why I say that Shakespeare’ comedies are full of jokes we will never understand.

    I bring all of this up because I am trying to hammer away at a first draft of my novel. I know full well that my first draft will not be good, and I am really trying to get it down so I have a starting point to begin crafting the story. So, as I rush through it, I am seriously cramming it full of inside jokes, to the point that I started to get self-conscious about it. I know my wife will read the draft, and most likely roll her eyes at me. Most of it will find its way out of the story, as the characters start to stand in their own, and not need the crutch of me anymore.

    But, I always wonder when I read a novel, if the name of the street that a character lives on is actually an homage to author’s mother’s maiden name.

  • Tales from the Video Store: Guardians (2017 Russian Film)

    If you are not aware, I do love bad movies. And Amazon Prime has become a goldmine for me when it comes to finding new awful films to watch. With their feature “Customers Also Watched” for movies which can lead me down a rabbit hole of amazing horrible bad movies.

    That’s how I got to “Guardians,” a 2017 Russian superhero movie that no one should ever confuse for anything associated with Marvel, or DC for that matter. I had actually thought it was one of The Asylum’s mockbusters, such as a rip off of “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Nope, I got something even more culturally rewarding.

    This “Guardians” is not only a bad superhero movie, but it is a bad Russian superhero movie that bombed in Russia. It’s like an added bonus that it’s disliked in two countries.

    It’s not really an awful idea for a movie. The superheroes are created but the Soviets during the cold war, with the lead scientist going crazy. The scientist blows something up, and everyone goes into hiding. (That’s the not so awful part; the Soviet thing, but I have a feeling the “Black Widow” movie this year will tell a better story… I digress…) Then years pass, the evil scientist returns, and so the superhero band has to be put back together. Stuff blows up, and the end. We got a guy who controls rocks… sure, why not. The super assassin guy, a dude who turns into a bear (Russian after all) and a women who disappears when she gets wet, or touches water.

    Oddly, no one flies, which means they were always dependent on a ride if you think about it.

    Not a very original film, and the worst part, besides some really awful special effects, is the montage of the band getting back together. The Rock guy is the one who goes out to collect everyone. So, each character gets a moment of showing how they have been using their abilities since breaking up. And after they get done demonstrating their abilities, usually meaning something blew up in slow motion, the Rock guy is there, right off camera to have some witty comment, which surprises that other hero.  It’s like no one sees the Rock Guy coming, ever.

    Either way, it’s a terrible/wonderful awful hour and a half of pretty much cliched superhero stuff from the other half of the world. I was left thinking that since this movie is generally hated in its home country, then maybe Americans and Russians are not that different after all.

  • Enablers

    I was nervous that Harvey Weinstein wouldn’t get convicted. I hadn’t been following the case closely, as I felt that it was only a 50/50 shot, he would be found guilty, and I had already decided that I believed the survivors. I didn’t need a jury to justify my stance.

    But Harvey is going to jail, and I hope that this brings about the beginning of the end of the idea that there are “untouchable” men in any industry that take advantage of their position.

    Now, it’s time that we start addressing the enablers that helped Harvey. The agents who sent women to his hotel room, and office. The directors who were ordered to put women in, or take them out of their movies, the assistants who heard what was happening and did.

    I know that there are people out there that want to punish all of these enablers, and I understand where they are coming from. And that may or should happen.

    From my experience, and I have spent some time in theatre education, it needs to start in all theatre classes, and be reiterated again, and again, all the way up to grad school, and supported by all the unions in the entertainment industry. There needs to be an ethical standard that everyone needs to understand and follow. And I’m talking about simple things like no more one on one meetings between actors and producers or directors. Actors/artist have the right to have an advocate present at all times.

    Harvey didn’t create this world of casting couches, and treating women as if they are disposable. And it is wrong for us to believe that even if these few men that have been outed by #MeToo all go to jail that this issue will go away. We have to start building the new acceptable culture of the entertainment industry today.

  • Thanks, Alex

    I think I need to take a break from the news. I could talk about South Carolina, or that Harvey Weinstein was just found guilty on two counts.

    But what I really want to talk about is listening to Parliament.

    What has brought this about recently is that we showed the kid “Guardians of the Galaxy, and Vol. 2” this weekend, and she completely latched on to the movies, the characters, and the music. (She’s been running around the playground telling the other kids that she’s Gamora.) We added both soundtracks to a playlist for her, which means we have been listening to it pretty much non-stop. That’s not a complaint.

    Vol. 2’s soundtrack has Parliament’s “Flash Light” on it, and this is how we get all of this tied together.

    I have some time for myself this day to work in the home office, and this would make a great time to start listening to Parliament again.

    I know the first time I heard/saw them, and that was on Saturday Night Live in 1986. (I know this only because I can look it up, not that the date was seared into my brain.) Watching George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic did leave me a little confused, as I knew it was a band, but the music and attitude on display was not like anything I had seen before.

    Jump ahead five years, and being in 9th grade I make that friend who loves Parliament, and my music horizons are broadened in a most needed way. The Mothership Connection, and Bootsy Collins, and the funk, and for a little white kid growing up in the suburbs, it was like getting invited to the party with the cool kids.

    I mean, I want funk uncut.